The World After Dark
by Moullei
Summary: It's been a few years, a couple of lives now passed. But only one story remains. "Everything seems less interesting after the sun goes down."
1. Chapter One: Auspicious

**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls**

* * *

The last thing my sister did before bed was whisper to Waddles, "sweet dreams."

I had occasional episodes of sleepwalking, so the two of us spent a few days coming up with a master plan to prevent anything stupid I might subconsciously succumb to. This personal matter was strange and unsettling. I never did it back home. It only started the first summer I arrived at Gravity Falls. Now it's been a couple of years, I thought it might fade away like so many other things. No. Tonight was no different from the rest. I didn't realize what I had done until my ankle yanked at the string, sending a barrage of marbles down on me.

"Ow!" They bounced off the wooden floor and rolled away. I was horrified. "Mabel, I though I told you no marbles! Something less pain-inflicting…" I pressed my palms against my temples, my head throbbing. I shot an unflattering frown at my sister. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Waddles squealed menacingly.

"Duck-tape." Her sigh told me sleep hand't quite released its grip on her. She lifted a finger and opened her mouth, the glint of her straight teeth calling back a time when it would have been silver instead of ivory braiding them.

I was only a few feet away from the door and hauntingly recognized what curled up beneath my arm. The spine of the book was soft and worn. I took it in both my hands, staring at the six-fingered mystery. _The number three is dangerous._

Waddles snorted. It sounded like he knew better.

"I'll be back." I mumbled and threw it on my bed. Mabel shifted to lie back down, I doubt she would even remember this in the morning. The doorknob twisted under my palm and I fumbled down the stairs.

Grunkle Stan snored with his head as far back as it could go, his adam's apple vibrating along with the soft undertones coming from the midnight soap operas flickering on the television. I moved past the room quietly, reaching the kitchen and opening the fridge, idly evaluating its contents. My hand reached in for the milk and jelly.

The cool draft rolling around the room swept the bottoms of my pant leg and I leaned against the counter, reading yesterday's newspaper in the dim blue light coming from the moon outside. I let my eyes wander from the letters, reading something about the Northwest and aliens making mysterious art in corn fields, to the desolate dirt road that came up to our little shack. I furrowed my brows and set the paper down, reaching farther across the counter to peer closer. Against blue and black making up the night looked like a shadow, cut and pasted with blurred edges against the outside, close to where I safely stood, inside. It was thin and sat cross-legged, with a head looking either at the view I saw of the sky behind its body, or at the shack. There was a sick feeling of eyes watching me, and I couldn't tell where they were coming from. When it raised a hand in gesture of a wave, I knew I was done. My heart leaped and burst and I ducked, rapidly moving out of the kitchen, leaving my burnt toast and glass of milk sitting in a mess of sticky jelly.

When I got back upstairs I maneuvered shakily over to our window and searched for the shadow. I didn't see it. I glanced at my book lying on my crumbled mass of bedsheets. Dread electrified my spine and played with areas of my mind I wasn't aware of. I picked it up with my fingertips and placed it carefully in the drawer of the night table. I crawled back in my bed, strangely. I stayed awake until the sun came in and sent the wood burning all around our room.

* * *

"Dipper." Someone whispered closely in my ear and I opened my eyes in panic. The sun was past its burning time and now it let in a regular tint of yellow. I turn over and see Mabel laying perfectly still next to me. She had one of those smiles on her face. A smile that meant Gravity Falls paid us homage.

"Santa came early." She said it with delight and held up a crown of braided grass and flowers. Jumping out of my bed she twirled, the edges of her nightgown lifting and dipping, her feet catching underneath the other. Her fingers gracefully placed it on top of her mousy brown hair and she took the quilt off her bed and draped it over her shoulders.

"Hail the queen!" She raised her hands dramatically and Waddles came trotting beside her to let out an agreeable noise. I told her a long time ago Santa wasn't real. A very _long _time ago.

She raised her brow and feigned sympathy. "Aw Dipper didn't get anything. I guess you weren't a good boy this year." She reached under her pillow and revealed a red fabric that acted like wrapping. "Just kidding! Womp!" She placed the package on my lap and I sat their, watching as she gave orders to her invisible servants.

My hands gingerly took hold of the fabric and I paused, asking, almost pleadingly, "Where did these come from?"

Mabel stopped and shrugged. "They were outside the shack this morning on the dirt road. Two for two." She smiled. "I bet it was those mushroom sprites. Can't go wrong with those guys." _I never told Mabel what happened to them. _

I frowned, trying to remember something important out of what she said. I found a folded piece of aged paper inside the fabric and unfolded it. I stood up from bed with wide eyes. Mabel bounced over and peered down.

"Hey! There's the missing page!" Fast, undecipherable letters marked up the paper with a few crude sketches and stains. I took Number Three out of my drawer and flipped to the section where the ripped paper fit like a jigsaw puzzle. I felt sick.

* * *

I was standing outside for a good ten minutes, watching the edges of the forest loom their shadows against the rocky terrain of our cheep driveway. I heard my uncle saunter over beside me.

"What's out there Stan?"

I knew what was out there. _Oh, I knew._ But I looked at our little world with new eyes and a nascent perspective. Nothing was familiar. A harrowing discomfort settled in my stomach, where I knew it would not go away.

"You don't wanna to know kid."

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**Thanks to all who read and review!**


	2. Chapter Two: If the Cradle May Drop

Thank you for all who reviewed! I enjoyed the feedback very much! For the question of how far we've dipped into the future (no pun intended), the answer will appear in the chapter ;)

**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls**

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"_Laws of the Night:_

_Firstly, never snoop. It's called The Mystery Shack for a reason._

_Secondly, never go outside alone after dark without my permission. _

_Lastly, never wake up Grunkle Stan. If you want a few punches to your gut and a slash to your ribs, go right ahead."_

The sheet of paper in my hands was ripped, stained, crinkled, and in some areas, doodled on. I read the small, tightly rounded and evenly shaped letters over and over again, watching the ball-point of my uncle's pen work their way around the chicken-scratch from years ago in my head. The shadows outside cast to the west, reminding me it was nine o'clock in the morning, four years later.

Authority had a narrow scope, besides the sensitivity to 'watch the merchandise'. But working as our soul guardian also lent him the role of the entertainer, trickster, regressive old man, and curious mystery keeper. It seemed from the minute our feet touched the ancient grounds of Gravity Falls, wonderland started to stir, awakening the strangeness and dazzling allurements we grew in fondness of.

Now, an unescapable morass of questions rattled me. Ideas of mine have become faded, estranged, polished and reborn. It was undeniable they would ever relieve me of the trivia I was consumed with; the need for _real _answers; answers explaining so many of the theories I drew with from the only source of survival I had. Where we fell into a mystical arena was where I now grew tall enough to escape from.

My focus pooled around the words and their ambiguity, never quite submerging them into consciousness. _Stan had a tendency of indulging in many of his secrets_. My eyes continued to strain. _Maybe it should have been a matter of what he _didn't _reveal_.

I remember uncomfortably making a copy of the rules one night, slipping it in my pajama pocket in case I forgot- or needed to remind myself in attempt to conquer my sleepwalking. But as time would season my bravado just as it would my senses, I realized the rules had nulled themselves after the various successes of foraging around town at night with Mabel in search of our latest chimerical topic.

"So guess who's making a surprise visit to the Shack this afternoon." I looked up to Stan's voice and saw a mug of coffee disappear behind the morning newspaper.

"Oh wait! I got this one!" Mabel slammed her palms down on the table. "Is it Lazy Susan?" She gave a gesture of innuendo at the printed words that separated us from him. Waddles trotted over beside her, lending an ear to her liveliness.

"Nope. Wendy."

_Oh. _I looked back down at the distorted symbols, realizing if instead they were composed of a cryptic language sent from a distant world, they wouldn't appear any more foreign or unnerving.

Wendy was away at college. She seemed to arrive on an unexpected day every summer to visit us, though family became the poster priority. Either it was out of obligation to come all the way out to the Shack or she truly wanted wanted to see how we were doing, I would never know. She always brought back a new story, a new boy, a new interest. The spectrum grew larger each time while my scopes collapsed on their thin subjects, damaging the restraints that held just one thought: _Gravity Falls. _

I heard a clearing of a throat. Stan folded up his newspaper and looked at me passively, already expecting what plan I may have formulated around her. I frowned at the stubble around his square jaw, feeling insulted.

"No. I'm done with that. Mabel," I glanced at her, "are you free tonight?"

"I always make time for Wendy!" She insisted as she poured syrup all over her pancakes. I nudged her arm and made her look at me. There was a rushed sense of secrecy between what my eyes could muster and her similar ones. Her head nodded before she could once again reply.

"Yes."

I sighed and picked up my plate, passing my uncle and all that I couldn't understand.

* * *

"I know why you're so cynical." Her body leaned against the doorframe of our room. I looked over Number Three to see the way she had her arms crossed, face serious- and yet her foot still played with the other. The stiff air suddenly drifted the pervasive scent of her morning shower and I looked up at the hanging cardboard box above her wherein held my enemy, the marbles.

She clicked her tongue as she walked over and with lacking grace sat with a heavy fall on my bed. I usually didn't understand her moments of pallid resonance but they chipped at her optimism sometimes.

There was something laying in her lap that I hadn't noticed before. She looked at the opposite wall and felt across the dried vines of her crown, the brown threads breaking off and scattering over her skirt. I drummed my fingers against the back cover of the book, not really paying attention to the frantic spread I used to be so engrossed with.

"I wish we kept the tape measure." She let the crown go and settled her hands in the interstices of my legs. By tilting her head, I could see her eyes dancing. "That way getting older didn't have to be so _boring." _

"Time traveling _was _pretty fun." I tried to glance at where her mind had disappeared. "At least we agree now on what time we want to revisit." Pulling my hat down over my eyes, I let out a soft, exasperated hum.

I wondered away for a moment. Past the walls of the attic, across the divide of the woods, and towards nowhere in particular. The barriers of the town expanded; an enclave now its own dimension, and dispersed were the effervescent native forms of the land.

The birds outside sang with an eerie paean for the trees whose cradling brought safety through the night. Albeit, that was only second to their ability to fly. They never had an innate fear of falling.

I pulled myself up a bit, straightening my back so that it would press against the headboard, giving my sister more room for her thoughts.

"Do you think it will ever stop?" Though the silence eased and coaxed the anxiety out of my mind, I couldn't recognize her question. I let a quizzical eye escape underneath the brim to see Mabel looking at Number Three.

_Maybe our perspectives weren't so different after all. _

I shut the book and pressed it tight, as if sealing away the mystic creatures and the body who seemed to have acted like a frantic slave to its pages. The golden hand reflected off the wood of the wall and it froze when I laid it down.

The tumble of tires and the crunch of gravel closed itself in on the Shack. For a few moments an engine stayed idle, until it faded into a softer rattle and stopped. A car door opened and shut. The lighter sound of footsteps made its way towards us. Mabel took my wrist.

"C'mon, let's go see Wendy."

* * *

Three of us sat at the diner, our old greetings and offered news settling in to a quaint relaxation. The neon light bordering the window illuminated with a steady beat, reminding me how now already six hours had passed in day one of Wendy's homecoming.

"…And so I told him my car's got some beastly insurance company already handling the situation, and then, you know, we hit it off." Wendy rolled her eyes and smiled behind her cup, debriefing us on the lucky guy she met back on her campus.

_Uncle Stan, she wouldn't have even left an opening chance._

Her words made half sense, and I made sure to smile encouragingly. It was difficult to listen while trying to think. When we wandered off in town to earlier, I began piecing together certain thoughts in my head. Now I was planning my words in frantic concern. Sounding insane would ruin me. Its cohorts battle with me every day.

"Does your dad camp a lot?" I veered the topic of discussion drastically into an unknown ditch.

Wendy shrugged. "Yeah, he's a total lumberjack. Him and my brothers do it all the time."

"But what about activities? Are they all during the day?"

"Well I guess. You can't go fishing or mountain climbing, or whatever he does, when it's dark." Her fingers locked together around her drink, taking a look outside and at its lurid blackness. Mabel looked at me strangely.

Last year marked our revelation of Number Three to Wendy. I stored a harboring fear that her mind might be assuaged by taking time to herself this summer still persisted despite her figure sitting right across from us. Red hair, freckled cheeks, joviality. They were all there. Every year she would drive _overnight,_ claiming her circadian rhythm _disrupted_ by her classes and eagerness to be back _home._

I shifted in the booth uncomfortably, folding my hands together one way, twisting their lengths another, and hesitantly deciding to spread them on my lap. I despised myself knowing only a few hours ago laxity chose to help me keep my mind slightly wayward of the dominant madness at play.

_Maybe there was something else watching. _

"What are you going to do Dipper?" The question sunk into my mind. Wendy read into a person like a psychic. I didn't help me: a book that reads its pages for everyone to hear. The hours I suffered in took no formal manifestation of any action, and yet she knew exactly what I wanted. The ditch seemed to glisten with anticipation.

Beside me, Mabel crafted people from the rolled up napkins she formerly tore at, yet I felt her discerning glance on me, waiting for my response, along with the girl opposite of us.

For a moment I took in the bitter scent of coffee coming from the bar, beckoning my endorphins to be released from dormancy. The resentments of an unknown creature crawled up and obsessively gripped at my consciousness, plucking the threads of my wrapped up fears.

"Mabel and I are going camping."

The silence of the napkin man falling onto the table and rattle of utensils was their informal reply.


End file.
